


sound formed in a vacuum may seem a waste of time (it’s always been just the same)

by theparadigmshifts



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Detox, Drinking, Healing, Hotels, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Post-Canon, Repression, Texting, boris my beautiful shithead son i don't think i did you justice but i tried my damndest, boris: where r u?? going 2 crash at ur hotel, theo: maybe i'll never see boris again, this fic's more tender than a raw steak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23408653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theparadigmshifts/pseuds/theparadigmshifts
Summary: The year after Amsterdam, Theo follows his conscience; Boris follows Theo.
Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 27
Kudos: 293





	sound formed in a vacuum may seem a waste of time (it’s always been just the same)

Boris drives Theo to the airport, after. It’s only been two days - two days since Theo’s world flipped around, but Theo wouldn’t say it’s been turned _upside-down_. It feels like something’s been righted. It’s the painting, of course it’s the painting. But it’s Boris, too. Boris beside him on the couch, long legs kicked out, shouting nonsense at the old movies on his TV. Boris maneuvering a needle with his long, thin fingers, hissing at him to hold still as he injected him with penicillin. Boris burning his fingers on the stove trying to heat up canned soup, letting loose a string of Russian curses that Theo was pleased to find he remembered, a decade later. 

Boris beside him in the driver’s seat, now, searching his face with dark eyes. Neither of them speaks, but Theo knows what Boris is thinking. He always has. He’s looking at him the same way he had under the streetlights in the desert all those years ago, brow pinched, just a little. And now, just like then, Theo knows exactly what that expression means. _Don’t go_. _Just give me a little more time_. 

Theo feels suddenly tossed out of orbit. There’s an unreality to New York, now, that he can’t bear, stifling like a too-strong perfume. 

“Boris -” he starts, but he doesn’t know how to finish it. He doesn’t have to; Boris unclicks his seatbelt, pulling him into a crushing hug across the console. It’s too long. Theo counts the seconds, swallows in discomfort. He feels like his skin’s crawling, fever-hot. _I’m still sick_ , he thinks. _I’m still sick_. He pulls back, but Boris cups the back of his head, then his shoulders, pinning him. 

“Safe flight back, Potter,” he says, all mirth. 

“That’s not exactly within my control,” Theo says. 

Boris laughs, tapping at Theo’s glasses. “Always the same, Potter,” he says, smiling. “Tiny little businessman. All frowns.” 

"I'm half a foot taller than you," Theo rolls his eyes. Boris is still holding him by the shoulders. “What?” he asks, finally. 

“You are okay, yes?” Boris asks. And it’s a stupid question. They both know it’s a stupid question. And then Boris says it again, and it’s not a question anymore. “You _are_ okay. You are going to be okay.” 

“I am,” Theo croaks. “Are you?” 

“Psh,” Boris says. “Am always okay.” 

He reaches into Theo’s coat pocket, then, before Theo can protest, pulling his phone out. He always does this. Touch is so easy for him, a thumb on the cheekbone, an arm slung around shoulders. He envies him for it. Theo can’t do this when he’s sober. Theo can’t reach out for someone else unless he’s drowning. No, actually. Not even then. 

“Boris, what -” 

“Unlock this.” 

“I’m not unlocking my phone for you.” 

“Fine,” he says, tossing it back into Theo’s lap. “Take mine, I trust you.”

Theo looks at it stupidly in his hands. “What?” 

“Put in your number,” Boris says, slowly. “I am trying to leave you mine. I have phone, now. I will text back this time.”

“Okay,” Theo says. He keys it in, hits save. For a minute, he thinks about putting his name in as _Potter_ , but he doesn’t. He writes _Theodore Decker_ , as though Boris wouldn’t know who he was otherwise. 

“I don’t know if American numbers need a different area code,” Theo says, holding the phone out, just to say something to keep him in the car, just for another three seconds. 

Boris takes it back, smacks a kiss to the face of it like a lucky coin. Theo huffs a laugh. 

“Okay,” Theo says. “Goodbye, Boris.” 

Boris raises his eyebrows. “Goodbye? No, Potter. I don’t think we ever say goodbye. We will see each other soon.” He clicks his tongue, inclines his head toward the double doors. “Don’t miss your flight.” 

“I won’t,” says Theo, something unnameable buzzing in his chest. When he’s standing in the security line, shuffling forward inch by inch, he hears the text tone, slides his phone back out of his pocket. _do not throw up on flight attendant ladies !!!!!!_ 😜😏🤣🤢🤢🤢

He saves the contact as _Boris_ , sliding his phone back into his pocket without replying. _Don’t miss your flight_ , he’d said. Theo had wanted him to say something else, he realized. Even if he didn’t know what that _something else_ was. 

* * *

It’s months before Theo hears from him again. _The thing that bound us together is gone_ , thinks Theo, scratching the old itch. _That was the last I’ve seen of him. He’s going to die. I’m never going to know it_. 

And then, the text: _new york??_ 👀

Theo huffs out a laugh in his hotel room, because there’s no one around to see him do it. Idiot. 

_No, I’m in Fort Worth on business._

_coincidence, potter! or fate! i will be in dallas 2morrow !_

_Then why did you just ask me if I was in New York?_

_i am now in new york, tomorrow dallas. is close to fort worth, yes?_

_...Yes._

_ok see you then_ 🤪

 _Wait, Boris._ _  
_ _Boris?_

 _meet me at cattle mans at 8. will send address soon_ _  
_ _we can be cowboys, you and me, in cowboy country!!_ _  
_ _we can see rodeos!!!_

_Boris, we’re not going to the rodeo._

* * *

They go to the rodeo. 

Boris buys them both cowboy hats, and Theo holds his awkwardly in his hand the entire time. Boris whoops his way through every event, and when they get to their feet again, he hooks his elbow around Theo, pulling him in by the neck. They’re very close like this, Theo thinks. Is anyone looking at them? He thinks of the way Boris had tipped his head to his in the parking garage, radiating joy, hand on the back of his neck. _He’s going to kiss me_ , Theo had thought automatically, expected the thought to come roaring in with panic. But that hadn’t been the thing he’d felt, had it?

They’d had dinner at the steakhouse the night before, sitting on either end of a wide, wooden table, and Boris had felt too close and too far the entire time. He spoke like no time had passed at all, like nothing had changed between them. Theo wondered if maybe it was true. 

They go back to Theo’s hotel after to grab a drink and decide where to have dinner. Instead, they get sloshed at the hotel bar and order room service to Theo’s room, sitting on the floor with the tray between them. Boris ends up reclining like a Roman, tipping his head back so that Theo can see the long, pale stretch of his neck, watch the muscles shift as he swallows, see his Adam’s apple bob. He looks so fluid, so easy, like he never thinks about his movements, isn’t even aware of the foot he’s got tucked up under Theo’s thigh. Theo is aware of every bone in his body, from the way he’s clenching the fork in his hand to the way he’s flexing his foot to get his toes to pop to the tightness in his jaw. He wants to put the plate down, to reach out in some way, to say, _I’m glad I’m here with you right now_ without having to say it. But he just takes another bite of mashed potatoes, watches Boris’s blur through the corner of his eye, where the glasses don’t reach. 

“Do you remember when we did this?” Boris says. “Thanksgiving dinner?” 

Theo swallows. “You stole me instant mashed potatoes,” he says. “I thought they’d be horrible.” 

“Psh, never,” says Boris. “I am an excellent cook. Yes?” 

“You can’t cook to save your life, Boris,” Theo says, fixing him with a glance. Boris raises his eyebrows at him, once, when he meets it. Theo looks. Theo has no idea what he’s looking for, but he looks. 

“Yes,” he says, softly. He looks away. “Finish your food. You’re too thin.” 

“Are you my mother, Potter?” Boris laughs, mouth full. Theo can feel Boris’s toes flexing under his thigh, an insinuation of a kick. He gets an urge, sudden and heady, to flick barbecue sauce right into Boris’s face. 

So for once, he doesn’t overthink it. He does. 

* * *

It’s late, by the time they’ve cleaned off the remnants of their food fight, gasping with laughter. Theo had climbed onto the bed, and Boris had crawled right in behind him without even asking. He hits the lights and takes the left side. Of course he does. It’s his. 

“I need a hit,” Boris says. “Do you want one?” 

Theo tenses. “I’m -” he pauses. “I’m trying not to. I don’t want to stop you -” 

Boris shrugs. “I tell you I can quit. I can quit.” 

“I want you to live,” Theo blurts out. It isn’t what he thought he was going to say, and he feels embarrassed, his chest a mass of squirming, rock-dwelling things. But then he thinks of Boris, calling the painting in, Boris putting his fingers down his throat, holding him up when he stumbled. Theo realizes he’s not saying it first. He’s saying it back. 

Boris just raises his eyebrows. “Okay,” he says. 

“Okay,” Theo says, softly. He’d expected Boris to leave by now. Theo watches him in the dark until the line of his nose appears, the bow of his lips. _This is strange_ , he thinks. _Grown men don’t do this. Grown men don’t share a bed, unless -_ But it would be stranger to say something now. Stranger for them to sleep in the same room and not in the same bed. 

Boris speaks before he can say anything. “Is it strange, to be in these hotels?” he asks, all casualness. And Theo suddenly understands, with a crushing, collapsing weight in his chest, why Boris is still here. The last time he’d seen him in a hotel room, he’d been dying. The last time, Boris had had to carry him out like a firefighter from a burning building, like a fifteen-year-old boy hauling his friend off the road before he could be blinded by the beam of headlights. 

“No,” Theo says. “No, it’s a balm. It lets me spend time with myself. Try not to hate the company.” 

“I don’t know if I believe you,” Boris says. 

“You think of that hotel as the place I almost died,” Theo says. 

“Yes,” Boris says, simply. “I don’t want to see it. Not again.” 

“It’s why you stayed.” 

“Yes.” 

“You have to look at it from another angle,” Theo says, quietly. “You taught me that. Amsterdam isn’t the place where I died. Or maybe it was. But it’s the place where I lived. It’s the place where you saved me.” 

Boris doesn’t say a word. He reaches out with one trembling hand to take Theo’s glasses off his face. And if his fingers brush his cheekbone when he does it, the thin skin beneath his eye, neither of them say anything. He puts the glasses on the side table, rolls back over to face Theo. And if he waits a few minutes before he slides his arm across Theo’s chest, knees tucked into the space between them, neither of them says anything about that, either. Theo pretends he’s asleep. He pretends until it’s true. 

* * *

It’s another two months before Theo hears from Boris again, and this time, he finally lets the possibility sink in: maybe there’s not going to be a last time. Maybe they’re going to keep seeing each other, and seeing each other, two planets drawing near in their orbits before being pulled apart again. Maybe they’re bound together with something durable, a thread that stretches but does not break. 

_where will u be 2morow?_

_Miami._

_late?_

_Still Miami._ _  
_ _Meeting with a buyer at 5pm._

_see you at 9 then_

_Business again?_

_of course_ 😉

Boris looks worse this time, all dark circles and bloodshot eyes. _You look like shit_ , Boris would say to him, but Theo doesn’t point it out. Boris’s leg won’t stop bouncing under the table, his fingers tapping out a rhythm on his knee. Theo wants to take his hand just to make him stop, wrap his fingers around his thigh. He doesn’t. 

_You quit_ , he doesn’t say. _Last time you told me you didn’t have a reason to. What did you find, Boris? What was your reason?_

Boris catches him looking, quirks up his eyebrows, once, in that old shared language. _What are you looking at, Potter?_ Theo just shakes his head, smiles a little. _Nothing. Nothing._ He watches Boris’s smile go wide and wolfish, mouth full of food, as he launches into his next story. 

“This hotel has everything,” Boris says in the room, long, restless fingers fiddling with the robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door. He runs his fingers across the sleeve and Theo sees him at fifteen, laughingly modeling cheap shirts in a superstore dressing room. “Maybe I understand you now. Easier to not do any work yourself.” 

_Oh_ , thinks Theo. _He’s not just staying for me. He’s staying for himself. He needs to erase Amsterdam, too_. 

“I don’t think I know how to take care of myself,” Theo says. “I don’t think I ever cared enough to learn.”

“You care now?” Boris asks, dark eyes snapping back to Theo’s. 

“I don’t know,” says Theo.

“Find someone to make you,” Boris says. He’s moved on to the soaps in the bathroom, the conditioner bottles. “To take care of you instead.”

Theo watches him fidget, looks at the knobby curve of his spine under his button-up as he bends to look at the marble in the sink, or the brass of the faucet. His shirtsleeves are rolled up, exposing the white shock of his forearms, the ropy veins. He can see pinpricks of sweat on his lower back, darkening the material from gray to black.

“Who takes care of you, Boris?” Theo asks. 

Boris turns so quickly Theo feels dizzy watching him. He sees something wounded flicker across his face, sees Boris think about putting the mask back on, shrugging it off. 

“I take care of myself,” he says, finally. 

_Come to bed_ , Theo thinks, wildly. 

“Are you going back to your hotel?” he says instead. 

“Oh,” says Boris, and the thing between them goes slack. “Yes, I should. It’s late.” 

_I’m sorry, you can stay_ , Theo thinks. _I think I sleep better when you’re here. I think I remember that_.

“Okay,” he says. There’s a pause. “Goodnight, Boris,” he says. 

He remembers Boris teaching him how to play Liar’s Dice in Las Vegas, feeling the plastic pieces clack and tumble around his cupped hands, covering them so Boris couldn’t see, looking him in the eye and telling him he rolled something he didn’t. _Two options, Boris_ , Theo thinks. _Call my bluff or up the stakes._

But Boris doesn’t do either. 

“Goodnight, Theo,” he says. He crosses to the door. He glances back at Theo one last time, and Theo holds his gaze until the door clicks shut behind him. 

* * *

Theo’s in Big Sur three months later, after buying back another set of Hobie’s changelings, a faux-Sheraton sofa and a set of riband-back chairs. The woman had invited him to stay for dinner, but he’d made his excuses and gone back to his hotel. The text from Boris this time had just read _?_. Theo knows he doesn’t have business in Big Sur, with the hikers or housewives or landscape artists, the way he knows that he hadn’t had any reason to be in Miami or Dallas. He texts him the address of his hotel. 

The sun is setting by the time Theo makes it back, and it’s getting cold, but Theo doesn’t mind. He walks around the back of the hotel, sliding off his shiny, Italian leather shoes, tugging off his socks, carrying them in his hands as he trudges down the beach. He sits on the sand until the sun goes down, listening to the waves and looking out into the great, unending black of the ocean. 

When someone settles down beside him, so close he can feel their heat, he doesn’t say anything. He just reaches out for the bottle he knows he’s being offered, takes a swig of it, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“It’s cold,” Boris says. Theo huffs a laugh. “But -” he holds up a finger and thumb, “hey! We finally made it to California!” 

“Do you still want to sleep on the beach?” Theo asks. He looks sideways at Boris, raising his eyebrows. His face is shining silver in the moonlight, all contrasts, but it’s not as sharp as it was a few months ago. 

Boris shrugs. “Why not?” 

Theo flexes his toes, burrows them back down into the sand. “Because I paid for a hotel room is why not,” he says, fussily. “Fuck. I should start charging you half.” 

He can feel Boris’s smile without looking to see it. He knows exactly what it would look like, but he has no idea what he’d find in his eyes. 

The waves creep closer on the beach, then retreat. Boris edges closer. 

“It wasn’t all bad, was it?” he asks. “Back then. We didn’t have anything, but…”

“But we had each other,” Theo says, and feels embarrassed for having said it. 

“Yes,” Boris says, immediately. Then, so quietly Theo thinks he might have imagined it: “I never stopped thinking about you. Not for a minute.”

Theo searches his face and finds an intensity there that makes him want to pull back, curl in on himself. He steadies himself instead. He tells the truth.

“Me neither,” he says. “I saw you everywhere.” 

“And now?” Boris asks. 

Theo nods. “Yes,” he says. “Even now. Especially now.” 

Boris reaches out to him in the dark, splaying his fingers across his cheek, turning Theo’s face toward his. His thumb brushes the corner of Theo’s lip, just for a second, and Theo is glad that the waves cover over the breath he sucks in. There’s a question in the gesture, and in the tilt of Boris’s chin, but Theo can’t answer it. He lets his own palm cover over Boris’s hand, keeping it in place. He can’t bear the weight of his gaze, so he closes his eyes. He waits. 

Boris’s lips are chapped. They brush Theo’s once, twice, light presses of warmth in the dark ocean breeze. Plausible deniability. Theo lets a breath out through his nose, tips forward, and tilts his head. Three, four. Five, six, seven. 

He and Boris have always been sharp elbows and broken noses, blood dribbling out of mouths and misplaced punches and manic laughter. Boris keeps an eternal flame roaring inside his chest, hungry like a forest fire. He stokes it himself, coaxes it hotter, trying to love an unkind world in the only way he knows how - by taking a bite out of it. By tearing it with his teeth. 

So there’s something that seems wrong about this tenderness between them. But maybe that’s just because they’ve been too afraid to ask for it. 

He leans his forehead against Boris’s and just breathes. He can smell saltwater and seaweed. 

“It’s cold,” Boris finally says, again. 

“Okay,” says Theo. “Let’s go inside, then.” 

* * *

They don’t talk after Big Sur. Theo thinks about texting him, types out messages and erases them. He buys back every fake. He breaks it off with Kitsey. He goes back to New York still feeling like he has penance left to pay, something left to atone for. 

He’s quieter in the shop these days. With every stop on the road he felt a little more of his veneer strip back, polyurethane plastic flaking off. He’s not exactly sure who’s left underneath, but he’s found that he’s okay with that. He wants to find out. 

When the bell dings, he’s not surprised to see the heavy swish of a black coat, the scuff of dark, heeled boots. There’s a bizarre rightness to Boris in the shop, after everything that’s happened, no matter how out of place he looks among the antiques. Theo feels something click into place, a bolt sliding securely into its jamb. 

“Potter,” he smiles, as wide and as genuine as always. Theo can’t help mirroring it. Boris has gained weight, filled out more than Theo’s ever seen him. There’s a little pudge to his stomach now, color high in his cheeks. He looks almost healthy.

“Boris,” Theo breathes. “What are you doing here?”

It’s the question he hasn’t asked. 

Boris’s eyebrows buckle. His mouth opens, and his eyes dart around. 

“You know what I’m doing here,” he says, finally. “Don’t you?” 

And he does. This whole time, Boris has been atoning, too - the painting and the plane tickets and the text messages. _I should have followed you then_ , he’s been saying. _But I am following you now. I am making it right._

Theo steps out from behind the counter. 

“Tell me,” he says. 

Boris shakes his head. “I can’t.” 

“I missed you,” says Theo, when he’s close enough to touch. 

“Yes,” says Boris, tugging on the cuff of Theo’s sleeve, once, twice. “Yes. That was it.” 

“That was it?” 

Boris snaps his eyes to Theo’s again. There’s an unexpected mirth in them, a laugh waiting to be uncorked. 

“Ask me to stay,” Boris says. 

“In New York?” Theo asks.

“Yes, in New York, where else? It’s a good city. Lots to do, here. Good people.” 

“What would you say if I asked you?” 

“One way to find out.” 

“Boris.” 

“I won’t say no,” he says, tipping his chin up. “I promise.” 

Theo clenches his jaw. Maybe he wants him to say no, he thinks. Maybe they’re going to pull each other down into the sea, drown each other when they’re scrabbling for air.

 _No_ , Theo thinks. That’s not right. Boris would haul him out of the water, pump his chest until he broke his ribs. Press his mouth to his and breathe into his lungs. He already has. 

_I love you_ , he’s been saying. _I want us both to live._

“Boris?” Theo asks. 

“Yes, Potter?” 

_Let me belong to you_ , he thinks, needy and raw. _Pick me_. _Maybe you can belong to me, too._

“Stay,” he says. 

When Boris grins, Theo can see him at fifteen with blood in his teeth, throwing back his head, at twenty-six, tipping his head toward the door of his engagement party. Impossible to puzzle out. The only thing that’s ever made sense. 

“Okay,” Boris shrugs. “If you insist.”

**Author's Note:**

> title from new order's "your silent face" ; special thanks to gabby, whom i love, for commissioning this!! 
> 
> you can find me on tumblr @ [theparadigmshifts](https://theparadigmshifts.tumblr.com/)


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